PARK CITY — “The Spectacular Now” starts out like a late-80s John Cusack comedy, and lead actor Miles Teller is a near-ringer for Cusack as a high school senior who rules the roost in the company of his hot girlfriend (Brie Larson). Thanks to a misunderstanding, though, the girl drops him (though this leads to no great drama) and Sutter (Teller) gets drunk and passes out on the lawn of a quiet, scholarly classmate, Aimee Finicky, who has a fondness for sci-fi comic books. Romance ensues.

Aimee is played by Shailene Woodley, who was effectively bitchy as George Clooney’s spoiled daughter in “The Descendants,” and she is by far the best element of what gradually turns into a downbeat and routine alcoholism drama. Woodley is terrific, perfectly catching the intelligence and optimism of this disarming character without ever seeming to be acting, and she is going to have a big career (she’s already landed the part of Mary Jane Watson in the next Spider-Man epic).

Teller isn’t nearly as good, and his “Say Anything” mannerisms would be easier to take if the movie could actually come up with anything funny for him to do after the whimsical opening minutes. Instead, all traces of wit disappear as we get scene after scene of Sutter drinking hard liquor from a flask in the middle of the day, and even drawing his new girlfriend into the bottle with him, though with hardly a peep of protest.

As director James Ponsoldt gradually hones in on Sutter’s drinking to the exclusion of all else, the plot points aren’t remotely convincing. For instance, after much discussion, the location of Sutter’s missing father, played by Kyle Chandler, turns out to be ridiculously easy to determine, but Ponsoldt hurries forth simply so he can show us that the dad, too, is an alcoholic. One character gets flattened by a car and yet is totally fine a short time later.

Ponsoldt’s last movie was another alkie drama, the worse-than-mediocre film “Smashed,” and if he’s a little soused on the idea that drinking equals drama, he needs to sober up a little. Nobody wants to see a depressing teen-alcoholic movie in the first place. Who is the audience for this film? I can’t see one.